Page 140 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Before they scattered in all directions, taking the fight to the creatures for a change.

And okay, maybe we had a chance!

Or not, I thought, as the Ancient Horrors tore through our new army like it wasn’t even there. Æsubrand looked like he couldn’t believe that, either, as the fey constructs weren’t puny. One could have taken on a human platoon and had a pretty good shot, but not a platoon of these things.

But the manlikans were having an effect, if not the one that Bodil had probably hoped for. Some had trapped slashing appendages inside their watery forms, tightening the ward that encased them enough that the furious creatures could not get back out, no matter how hard they struggled. Others were piling on individual Horrors, six and eight at a time, sealing them off by the watery scrim of their bodies and effectively drowning them in mid-air. But most were breaking against the assault like the tide, exploding on all sides and seemingly useless—until you noticed that the enemy had come to a halt, giving us a brief reprieve.

Which Bodil and Æsubrand intended to use to shove me into the crevasse whether I liked it or not. “Get ready,” she told him. “I have to release the spell to let you through. Take her to the portal and thence to Earth—”

“Like hell,” I said, thrashing. “They’ll kill you as soon as you let go!”

“What do you think is going to happen in any case?” she snapped.

“I . . . am not entirely sure that I know how to repair the portal, should it be required,” Æsubrand told her. “We had servants for such things. . .”

“Then figure it out!”

“I will do my best,” he said before a watery hand reached out and jerked him up to her face, dragging me along for the ride.

“You. Will. Figure. It. Out!” she yelled. “I buy your chance with blood, princeling! We all do! And you,” she looked at me. “I hope you’re as evil as your mother. You’ll need every bit of it. Now go!”

We didn’t go. A zerg rush of creatures came at us from the side through one of the steadily widening gaps in the flames, just as the ones overhead swooped down in a combined attack, forcing Bodil to change course.

Instead of releasing all that water, she dropped us and reclaimed her watery fists, sending one to meet the flock mid-air. It slammed into them in a liquid firework that sent them flying in all directions, shedding feathers, fur, and other stuff I couldn’t name and sending ear-splitting shrieks echoing around the room. While swiping with the other hand at the force on the ground, throwing them into chaos once more.

Æsubrand abruptly released me and spun to take on something massive and prehistoric-looking, covered in armored plates like a Stegosaurus that God had cursed, that had somehow withstood the onslaught, and I took the only chance I’d likely have to reason with Bodil.

“I’m not leaving without Pritkin!” I told her. “And the rest of you!”

“Stupid child! Stop thinking about yourself!”

“I’m not!” I yelled back, more furious than I could remember. “Listen to me! I can’t do this without you!”

“And why not?” she sneered. “You’ve been managing so far—”

“Because I can’t use this!” I screamed and held up Radu’s ring, which had come alive in the pocket I’d stashed it in after Bodil started a flood of water magic spilling everywhere, to the point that it had been burning the crap out of me with just the overflow from its power. And was now sending a cascade of bright blue light everywhere that lit up the water with a shimmering, glowing, spectacular iridescence like nothing I’d ever seen.

It was beautiful, I thought, dazzled in spite of everything. It was beautiful! Like the bioluminescent waves on some beaches on Earth.

Only the creatures didn’t seem to agree.

Maybe because it was burning them, too. Every Horror that the light touched started screaming and, in some cases, writhing, smoking, and melting, with appendages sloughing off of the bones underneath like shed clothes. Only clothes didn’t bleed that much.

It was as if the tide rolling out from us was no longer water but acid, causing bloody pools in different shades to bloom everywhere. But I didn’t feel anything. I was getting hit with spray from all sides, but it was just cold, clear liquid, without even its former black color, now that it was outside of the caves.

Bodil grabbed me. “You wait until now to show me this?” she screamed and snatched it.

And I guessed she did know how to use it because a second later, the flow from below suddenly increased, like a Yellowstone geyser times ten. To the point that I was blasted backward, slipping and sliding and landing on my face. I picked up my head to avoid drowning in the madly frothing water and then just stayed there, staring.

The crevasse had become an enormous fountain, now gushing up three or four stories high and causing the flying things to wheel away, back toward the top of the cave and out of its acidic spray. And it was raining death on the demons down here while the surging waves flowed over any who stumbled as I had. But while all that had happened to me was that I’d ended up soaked again, when the water washed past them, it left only more bones behind to join the skeletons already there, with all traces of anything else eaten away.

I stared at the twisted remains of something a few yards off, the bones of which were sizzling despite all the water, and the realization hit hard. Pritkin was part demon, too! I looked around for him for a blank second and then scrambled back up, screaming his name even though I knew it was useless; he’d never hear me in this!

I’d forgotten that he’d linked our translators, something that the curses suddenly flooding my ears reminded me of. And then I spied him coming at a run through the maelstrom of acid-like rain whipping about us like a hurricane because Bodil was getting the hang of whatever the hell was in that ring. And he wasn’t burning.

He wasn’t burning!

Human blood for the win, I thought dizzily, as he grabbed me, bleeding from a dozen wounds but still on his feet. And tore me off of mine as the furious waters cut out like someone had twisted a spigot. I guessed Bodil had enough liquid to work with up here now. And the next moment, before I could even catch a breath, his momentum had us plunging into that dark, watery hole, which had once looked so forbidding, but now—

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